If someone hasn't yet played SoE it is definitely worth recommending. It really adds a lot of uniqueness and new thrills with a lot of customized features while still keeping core mechanics that we all enjoy. There are a lot of activities to also keep you occupied other than hunting so everyone should be able to find their thing.
As for the negative comments from other users those you definitely have to take it with pinch of salt because there was a lot of abuses going on either from major teams or individuals. At some point major team would really ruin fun for casual player audience and actions taken by administration were to sort those things out but those type of players just never reflect on their own behavior and instead just spill their toxicity elsewhere.
Regarding why NA server eventually went downhill would be for different reasons:
- Couple of significant rollbacks (which are really fixed now and system in place is truly gorgeous)
- In few cases lack of proper attention and action to some game breaking bugs (hope that this lesson is truly learnt and there won't be case of abuse till its fixed type of attitude)
- Release of content which made top players fly with progress and wealth which would lead to destabilization of economy etc.
- And the thing that affected all above would be rushed changes with what would feel like lack of proper second thought behind them.
So as you can see things definitely weren't perfect, but what I can say is that most changes really in the end were good and they will provide much more stable and balanced progression on the new server.
Personally I'm not yet sure if I will join EU release as there were many unfulfilled promises made but that might be just intentions vs what is humanly possible between irl obligations and developing OT. This team has couple of really cool devs who trully give their best so there definitely is hope.
That being said I want to believe that NA release was also a big lesson for administration and that decisions will be made much more carefully and issues/bugs/fixes will be addressed with proper priority and attitude.
This server is a really great product and I wish administration and players all the best on your adventure with SoE.
On a final note. Discord server. I was out of OT scene for quite some time and I must say that server's discord is one of most toxic discords that I encountered in long time. Not sure if it is because tibia community hasn't changed much at all or is just the case for this server.
If you want to be more appealing to wider audience I would say it definitely should change because basically few individuals can make me not visit this discord at all with all their toxicity and irrelevant spam thus I'm not quite sure if this is healthy to stay this way.
Best regards.